The Arizona sentinel., 1887-07-23
STORIES OF SHARKS.
Bits of Information Concerning the Habit
 of the Dreaded Man-Eaters.

VT SilFHihFNSs
 Bits of Information Concerning the Habits
 of the Dreaded Man-Eaters.
 While an English ship was lying off Port Natal, severeal huge sharks, some of them more than fifteen feet in length, were seen sweeping under the vessels counter and along her sides. A hook was baited and thrown over board, and was immediatly swallowed by one of the biggest of the fish, which quietly cut the line with its teeth, taking no further notice of it. Then the breast of a buck was weight ed, that it might sink, and inside of it there was placed charge of gun-cot- ton, and the whole connected by wire with an electric battery. No sooner had the. venisOn touched the water than the shark made straight for it, but just as he opened his mouth to swallow the bait. the charge was ex- ploded, and his jaws were completely shattered. The monster turned on its back and sank in the bay.
 The shark family is large one, and most of the species are hjdeously ugly. A few have a kind of fierce beauty about their shapes. Such is the fin in some parts with red and dotted with small black spots. Such, too. is the sea-fox. as it used to be called, found in the Mediterranean and re- markable for the great length and fine proportions of Its tail, the body being about seven feet and the tail six feet long.
 The lump of beef or pork, the large hook connected by chain to the line, the adroit paying-out of the bait-this is the old-fashioned device by means of which many thousands of the sailors enemy have been caught, and then re- turned to the deep in fragments, to serve as food for other sharks. But this method of fishing is not sure. The creature often escapes after gorging the hook. To make his destruction certain the sailors sometimes blow up with powder or other explosives hidden in the bait.
 The horror of the deep is the white shark, which is often thirty feet long weighs 4,000 pounds. It has a mouth furnished with a six-fold TOW of teeth, flat, triangular and finely serrated. When thIs shark is in a state of repose these dreadful teeth lie flat in the mouth, but when it seizes its prey they rise like the fabled growth of deadly weapons from out of the soil.
 Among certain tribes in the South sea the shark used to be worshiped under the title of Joujou. Its votaries sacrificed rabbits to it; but, knowing it's appetite, once year they bound a child ten years of age, and decorated with flowers, to a post on the beach, at low tide, and then left it to be de- voured by Joujou.
 For ages -seamen have viewed the shark as creature of ill-omen. They believed that it could scent victim even though he should be perfectly well, and without suspicion of his death being close at hand; and that it would follow ship that had a dead body in her for leagues and leagues.
 In Ceylon there are people who be- lieve in shark-charmers, called Kudal ! or Timmal, which signifies "sea-brecd CTS" These magicians are employed i by pearl-divers to protect them while under water. There is head wizard, pensioned by the Government to whom every boat gives ten oysters daily.
 To harpoon a shark requires prac- ticed eye and cunning hand. The | vessel, moreover, should be motionless, ! and the shark within reach of the har- pooner's muscle. Chicaqo Nc10S.